The buffalo were free but the park wasn’t interested

Ron Barela describes himself as one indignant bison owner. Barela, who operates the Badger Pocket Bison Ranch in Washington state, wrote to say he’s repeatedly offered to donate “FREE OF CHARGE, healthy, purebred, North American plains bison” to the Golden Gate Park pen.

Despite e-mails, letters, and phone calls, he says the city has either ignored him or promised to get in touch and never followed up.

Fine, Barela figured. There probably isn’t room for any more buffalo.
But then, last week, someone sent him a story in the Chronicle that not only described the arrival of seven new baby bison, but said that six of them were purchased for $1,200 each. (The seventh was donated.)
“When I read what they paid for them, given that they could have gotten them for nothing, except for transportation, I was feeling a little indignant,” Barela said in a phone conversation.
Barela, a graduate of Berkeley High and retired Berkeley cop, says he always had fond memories of the park from when his family used to visit the buffalo and then have a picnic “under the statue of Black Jack Pershing.”
But now he’s fed up with the park.
“Is this park stupidity, corruption or both?” he asks.